Ben and Alonna » 2008

Christmas in Minnesota 2008

Alonna — Sat, 03 Jan 2009 22:30:38 +0000

I hope everyone had a wonderful Christmas and New Year! Ben and I had a great time in Minnesota visiting family and friends. It always goes by too fast though, doesn’t it?

Click Continue Reading to see the rest of the photos…

Annaliese & Madisen - Christmas Pajamas

Opening the "big one"

The Result!

A White Christmas in MN

We sent the little ones to fetch gifts from under the tree!

Annaliese getting the last gifts

Family Photo - Christmas 2008

Madisen

Opening gifts Christmas Eve

Opening Gifts

Look what I got!

Cody's Birthday Dinner

Poor Madisen was really sick

Cody's Birthday

Annaliese

Birthday Boy

Triple Espresso Comedy Show

Thanksgiving in White River 2008

Alonna — Wed, 03 Dec 2008 19:46:01 +0000

Here are some photos from Thanksgiving at my grandparent’s house in South Dakota (including a few below from my sister-in-law Heather). We had a great time – lots of family, food, desserts, card playing, and fun!

(NOTE: click on Continue Reading below to see the rest of the photos!)

Here’s a few photos from Heather. She’s a much better photographer than me. Actually she just started her own business, Natural Reflections Studio!

Washington DC

Alonna — Wed, 12 Nov 2008 05:20:49 +0000

After my SWE Conference in Baltimore, I took a train to Washington DC. I’ve never been there before and since I was so close (a 40-min train ride), I decided to squeeze it in. I stayed over night Saturday and then got up really early on Sunday to see the sights. My flight left at 5:30pm so I didn’t have much time.

I was out on the “mall” by 8am, and it was a beautiful day! There was hardly anyone out yet, only a few other tourists and joggers. You can see this in some of my earlier photos – later in the day it became much more crowded. I walked all around the mall from one end to the other – it’s a lot further than it looks!

The museums opened at 10am and by that time I needed a break from the walking anyway. I visited the Air & Space Museum first. It’s huge and there’s a lot of really cool things to see – a lunar module, hubble telescope, Wright Brother’s airplane, Amelia Earhart’s airplane, etc. I could have spent a lot more time there, but I went through fairly quickly (~1 hour) so I could see more. Next I went to the Natural History Museum (by the way, the American History Museum was closed for renovation). This museum was very cool too, and again I could have spent a lot more time there. Next time I guess! By then I had a little over an hour before heading back for my flight, so I decided to visit the Holocaust Museum. Wow. I thought I already knew a lot about the Holocaust, but nothing prepares you for this. I don’t really think I can describe it, you would just have to go yourself. And you definitely should – it’s a must see. Unfortunately it left me leaving DC feeling kind of depressed…

Anyway, it was really fun to spend a day in DC. I kind of like traveling by myself, it makes me feel independent. But, I think it would have been even nicer to have someone with me – to comment and discuss things with, and especially so they could take photos of me!

Early Morning in DC

Washington Monument

WWII Memorial - Stars

Washington Monument & WWII Memorial

WWII Memorial

Lincoln Memorial

Alonna & Lincoln Statue

Alonna - Washington DC

Washington Monument

Korean War Memorial

Reflection of the American Flag

Vietnam War Memorial

Washington Monument

White House

Washington Monument

Natural History Museum

Capitol & Darfur "Tents of Hope"

Tents of Hope for Darfur

US Capitol

Air & Space Museum

Lunar Module

Dinosaur Fossils - Natural History Museum

Albertosaurus!

Natural History Museum

SWE Conference

Alonna — Tue, 11 Nov 2008 05:49:17 +0000

I’m back in Boise after a long weekend in Baltimore for the Society of Women Engineers Conference. The conference was great! Here’s some photos from the weekend…

HP Recruiting on Thursday night:

During a break from workshops and SWE meetings, my new HP friend Amy and I wandered the career fair. I gathered a bunch of goodies to give away at SWE events. Oh, we also found the Microsoft booth and played guitar hero

The HP group went to a formal SWE Awards Banquet on Friday night, where we cheered on a fellow HP employee who won an award.

I attended SWE meetings as my section representative – we voted on important issues regarding how SWE is run. This group is like the legislative branch of SWE and it was a really interesting experience. Especially because there was a couple very controversial issues at stake! Here’s me taking notes and everyone holding up their green voting cards.

Finally, here’s some other random photos of Baltimore and the conference…

Society of Women Engineers

Alonna — Thu, 06 Nov 2008 05:02:50 +0000

Today I traveled to Baltimore, Maryland to attend a National SWE Conference. I have been a member of the Society of Women Engineers, or SWE (pronounced “sw-ee”) since college. SWE is a national non-profit organization which encourages women to enter and succeed in the engineering field. I’m President of our local Southwest Idaho SWE Section, and I was lucky enough to get HP to fund my trip!

Sunset from my flight:

For some background on me & engineering, here is a profile I wrote for a SWE newsletter last year.

…

SWE Newsletter – October, 2007

How I got into engineering
Growing up I was always interested in math and science and excelled in these subjects. In high school I really enjoyed my Chemistry, Physics and Calculus courses. One day in Physics class, two professional engineers came to talk to us. One was a female and a Chemical Engineer. She told us about a summer internship she had which involved taste-testing ice cream. I didn’t know very much about engineering at that point—and to this day I’m not really sure how much engineering her internship involved—but at the time I thought, “There’s a job I could live with!”

With the encouragement of my parents and high school math teacher, I decided to give engineering a try. I initially considered, of course, Chemical Engineering. However, when I started college at the University of Wisconsin in Madison, I took one semester of Chemistry and decided that ice-cream tasting internship or not, I was definitely not interested in Chemical Engineering. Luckily the following semester I took a Computer Programming class, and right away I knew that was it. As college continued and I moved from general engineering courses to more specific Computer Engineering courses, I became more and more excited and confident in my decision to pursue Computer Engineering.

My current job
I have worked as a Hardware Design Engineer in Boise for 4 years. My job involves working with a team to design and test computer chips (Application Specific Integrated Circuits, or ASIC) that control LaserJet printers. At this point in my career I would say this job is pretty close to ideal. Although working on printers may not sound particularly spectacular, let me explain why I enjoy it so much.

The work I do is interesting, challenging, and provides continual learning. No matter how much you like the people you work with or your paycheck; if you don’t enjoy the day-to-day work that you do, I am not sure you would ever consider it your ideal job.

The next best part of my job is the people I work with. I have been lucky to work with a fun and intelligent group of people. Our work environment is relaxed and emphasizes teamwork. I am continually impressed with how willing my coworkers are to help each other out. Coming into work with this group of people makes every day enjoyable.

The final area that is great about my job is the benefits and opportunities that HP offers to employees. I appreciate benefits like flexible work hours, the ability to telecommute, flexibility when raising a family, and the importance placed on work/life balance.

I love my job, but that doesn’t mean I don’t love my non-work life as well. I like the motto “work hard, play hard” and I practice this by sticking to a 40-hour work week most of the time and taking vacations throughout year. Another great thing about working for a large company like HP is that there are a lot of opportunities to change jobs and try new things. Although I have just told you how much I love my current job, I do not expect to be doing the same thing in another 5 or 10 years! I like to be challenged and continue to learn new things, and at HP I don’t think I will have any trouble accomplishing that.

Why I like engineering
Someone once described engineering to me as using science to develop practical solutions to real-life problems. What initially drew me to math and science is my interest in how the world works and my natural aptitude in the subjects. But what got me hooked on engineering is the idea of taking that science and applying it to find solutions to problems. In addition to problem solving, I like engineering because it allows me to do what I really enjoy in life – spending time with my family and traveling.

Why I am involved with SWE
There are many reasons why I enjoy participating in SWE, but I will focus on the two most important to me: outreach and professional development.

I am passionate about outreach because I think there is a social pressure for young girls to shy away from math and science. Until our society changes, it is important for us to encourage young girls and women by informing them about engineering, providing role models for them, and supporting women who are pursuing engineering. As a whole, women are not better or worse engineers then men, but they do bring diversity of ideas and skills to the workplace and they should not be discouraged from entering a profession dominated by men.

My second reason is professional development. By taking officer positions and organizing programs, I am able to improve my leadership, teamwork and communication skills. This benefits me personally and also in my career. SWE is an excellent way to develop leadership skills because it is a low-pressure and supportive environment.

Linder Farms Kite Photography

Bullet-Point Ben — Mon, 27 Oct 2008 03:27:34 +0000

My friend Randy Feist has a pumpkin farm in Kuna, ID.

Quite an operation: pumpkins, corn maze, petting zoo, mini-pumpkin slingshot, hay bale maze, hay rides, etc.
I didn’t quite get the pictures I wanted – a view of the whole 35 acre party and a few pictures of just the corn maze. I’m starting to think that real-time video of what the camera is seeing might be handy.
I added a servo to the setup, which should have caused the rig to automatically pan left and right, for a total range of 180 degrees. Not sure it worked though, mostly because I couldn’t get the screw connecting the servo to the rest of the rig tight enough – so the servo was rotating, but not really taking the rig with it.
In spite of these difficulties, we got some pretty good pictures…

Linder Farms

Kite and Camera

Ben Flying the Kite

Scarecrow 1

Scarecrow 2

Barn and Kite

Linder Farms

Pumpkin Patch

Pumpkin Patch & Hay Rides

Corn Maze

Kid's Train Ride

Linder Farms

Linder Farms - Mini Maze

Alonna (top left corner)

Tables and Shadows

Linder Farms

Ben’s Projects: Phrase-based ASCII Art

Bullet-Point Ben — Fri, 24 Oct 2008 17:42:57 +0000

So I’ve been toying around with ASCII art for about 10 years now. My last ASCII project was multi-layered ASCII art, which looked pretty awesome I think, here’s my ASCII take on Da Vinci’s masterpiece. I also wrote a program that converts videos into ASCII videos, here’s me mountain biking, and here’s me mountain biking some more. I have ideas for taking ASCII art to a whole level way beyond all that. But the world isn’t ready for that yet, first I wanted to try an idea I’d been kicking around: phrase based ASCII art. The idea is to just throw in a bunch of phrases related to the subject, hidden like in a word search, but in places where they contribute the picture, or at least don’t ruin it.

I wrote most of the code on the way to Moab (9 hr drive each way). Below is a “picture” of me in Moab. Hidden inside are phrases like “slickrock” and “mountain biking”, 23 phrases in all. Somehow the phrases are harder to find than I thought they would be, I’m not sure it passes the “would I want to print it out, frame it, and hang it on the wall” test.

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So I decided to try again using only the phrases and select non-distracting ASCII characters: .:#*(){}[]/!, etc.

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And ultimately I decided I like the first version a lot better. I printed it out and put it up in my cubicle at work. I don't think it's going to take the ASCII art world by storm, but you never know...

Moab ‘08

Alonna — Wed, 22 Oct 2008 03:00:10 +0000

Last weekend we took a road trip to Moab. Ahh, Moab, I love that place! If you’ve never been to Southern Utah you should definitely add it to your “list” (if you have one, well, doesn’t everyone?). The scenery is just amazing. Bright orange and red rocks in all kinds of shapes and formations. And usually the sky is bright blue which makes a nice contrast.

On Thursday in Moab we biked the famous Slickrock Trail. This trail is like a playground for bikes. Bike tires stick to the slickrock (which actually is not slick at all, it’s really sticky) so that you can bike on slopes you wouldn’t normally think possible. Of course, it takes a lot of skill, strength and bravery to bike up or down very steep slopes anyway… so mostly I just get off my bike and walk But there are a lot of things I can do and it’s still a blast. We brought one camera with us, but unfortunately it’s battery was still plugged into the wall at home charging. So, no pics. But it looks pretty much the same as our photos from last year.

Friday we took a shuttle to ride the Porcupine Rim trail. The shuttle took us much further than we originally anticipated, so it was a REALLY long bike ride. I’m not sure but I would guess at least 25 miles. It was mostly downhill – we started way up near the La Sal mountains and biked all the way down to the river. The views were amazing, especially the parts that were along the rim overlooking castle valley. Overall it was a fun ride with great views, but a little too technical for my taste (big rocks, drop offs, obstacles, etc). Here’s some photos:

Porcupine Rim Shuttle

Ben and Alonna - Porcupine Rim

Bikers - Porcupine Rim

Alonna - Porcupine Rim

Porcupine Rim

Ben - Porcupine Rim

Porcupine Rim

Ben - Porcupine Rim

Alonna - Porcupine Rim

Ben - Porcupine Rim

On Saturday we were too exhausted to do anything active. So we slept in and then drove around Moab. It was nice because I’ve never really had extra time in Moab to just sight-see. We drove on a scenic road near town and saw Native American Petroglyphs (picture carvings on the rock) and even some dinosaur tracks! You would think dino tracks would be a big deal, with a big sign and roped off, etc. But nope, just a little sign that pointed them out. You could even hike up there to see them up close, which we couldn’t resist. It must not have been a very big dinosaur because the tracks were smaller than I expected. Here’s some photos from our Saturday excursion:

Moab Mountain Climber

Moab - Indian Petroglyphs

Alonna & Petroglyphs

Ben - Indian Petroglyphs

Dinosaur Tracks! (flat rock slab in the middle)

Alonna & Dinosaur Tracks

Dinosaur Tracks!

Alonna - Moab

Moab - Potash Road

Moab - Jug Handle Arch

Moab - Castle Rock

Not Moving

Alonna — Fri, 10 Oct 2008 04:28:22 +0000

As many of you know, Ben and I have been trying to buy a “short-sale” house in Eagle since last March. Well, this week we canceled our offer on the house in Eagle. In light of the financial crisis in the US and around the world, we decided to play it safe and stay where we are. The whole process has been pretty interesting, so below is a timeline of how it all happened.

Our House: Short-sale House:

November 2007 – Ben gets a job at HP. Now we both work at HP, a 25-min commute to the other side of town.

February 2008 – We decide to look at houses in Eagle. We’ll take advantage of falling house prices, move closer to work, and keep our old house to rent out while the market recovers.

March 2008 – Visit the “Shadowcrest” house for the first time and fall in love with it. It’s 2600 sq ft, single level 3 bed, 3.5 bath, plus office and bonus room. Plus it’s close to biking trails, and 10 minutes from HP. The agent tells us it’s a “short-sale”. When awe ask what that means, she tells us that the sale has to be bank-approved, which will take 30-60 days, and we’ll buy the house as-is. Sure, sounds fine to us.

March 19, 2008 – Make our first offer on Shadowcrest for $280k.

April 2008 – No word about our offer, so we just sit back and wait. Of course we expect it will be any day now. I start packing.

May 2008 – Still no word on our offer. We’re starting to get a little annoyed, as we thought we’d be moving by now. Meanwhile we’ve done more research on short-sales. A short-sale is when a homeowner stops making payments on their loan, but is trying to sell their house before going into foreclosure. However, they owe more on the house than the current market value, so the owner tries to persuade the bank to forgive the difference in the loan. Therefore, when you buy a short-sale house, it’s dependent on the bank approval since they’ll be taking a loss.

May 2008 – Finally we hear that the “BPO” (an appraisal done by the bank to determine the value of the house) has been performed. Great news! We should hear back from the bank’s negotiator any day now.

June 2008 – No word from the bank. Our offer has long since expired, so we decide to create a new offer. The market has dropped significantly in the last 3 months, so we lower our offer to $270k.

June 2008 – We learn that the house will go up for foreclosure auction on July 3rd. This means that our short-sale offer must be accepted before that date. Of course, we expect word any day now… and plan to stay home over the 4th of July weekend so that we can move. At this point we’re glad for a deadline; whether or not we get the house at least we’ll know by July 3rd.

July 3rd, 2008 – The auction date of July 3rd passes by with no word from the bank. However, we find out that the seller has filed for an extension so the foreclosure is postponed. We are hopeful that this means we are close to the end!

July 2008 – We learn that the bank we’re dealing with is IndyMac, a large bank in California that failed in July. This partially explains the excessively long “short”-sale process.

July 31, 2008 – No word from the bank. Our second offer has expired, so again we decide to create a new offer. This one is for $265k, since we continuously feel like the market is dropping and we deserve a good deal for all this waiting.

August 4, 2008- Finally! The bank responds to our offer! They counter with $298k. We are annoyed with their price and want to play hardball, so we counter with $270k.

August 12, 2008 – The bank responds again, this time with a counter offer of $295k and a note that they will not go any lower. Meanwhile, Ben and I hear rumors of layoffs at HP, so we start to feel nervous about buying a new house.

August 13, 2008 – We cancel our offer on the Shadowcrest house. We aren’t happy with the price, and we’re concerned about losing our jobs. Also we think that retracting our offer and waiting a month will put us in an even stronger position to negotiate, should we keep our jobs and decide to proceed.

August 26, 2008 – Ben and I learn that we are both keeping our jobs at HP – woohoo!

August 30, 2008 – We tour Shadowcrest for the 4th time to make sure we still love it – we do. Our agent tells us that she believes the bank will accept a $290k offer but nothing less. She encourages us to decide if we’re serious about buying the house, and if so, consider making an offer that the bank will actually accept.

September 3, 2008 – We make a fourth offer on Shadowcrest, this time for $290k. We convince ourselves that even though it’s above our previous offer prices, we’re still getting a good deal since this is the cheapest house in the neighborhood at $108/sq.ft. At this point we just really want to buy the house and move in already!

September 2008 – No word from the bank. This shouldn’t be a surprise, but with our new offer price we expected to hear back right away. I pack a few more boxes.

October 7, 2008 – As more financial institutions fail in the US and the future of the ecomony is more and more uncertain, we bail.

Present – We’re a little disappointed, but it’s been an interesting experience. We still really like our current house, and now I’m thinking about fixing it up a little.

This weekend I plan to unpack the boxes and re-move in…

-Alonna

Poison Ivy in Idaho?

Bullet-Point Ben — Mon, 29 Sep 2008 04:41:13 +0000

Apparently so…

Here’s the location

Found it in the valley between Squaw Creek trail and Cobb trail. I didn’t roll around in it though, maybe it’s just poinsettia.

I brought my kite/camera gear along too, mostly just to see how hard it is to bring the whole setup on a challenging bike ride, in preparation for trying the same thing in more interesting out-of-the way places. The kite stayed up just long enough for me to attach the camera and then floated back to earth. It was too hazy for good pictures anyway.

Why you should setup an RSS Reader (and how)

Alonna — Wed, 17 Sep 2008 02:37:51 +0000

If you read our blog, or any other blogs, you might find yourself checking them frequently only to find that nothing has been updated. Or you might forget about them and then later when you remember to check there’s 6 months of posts that you’ve missed. This is why you should setup an RSS reader.

You don’t need to understand what RSS means, but if you want to then just look it up on Google or Wikipedia. The point is that almost all blogs and news websites allow you to subscribe to them, via RSS feeds. When you subscribe to an RSS feed you can be notified when the blog has been updated.

The most common way to do this is to use an RSS Reader. This is especially useful when you want to subscribe to more than just one blog. There are a lot of free readers out there, but the one I use and recommend is Google Reader. Just follow that link, sign up for a Google account if you don’t already have one, and setup your RSS Reader. Google will give you all the instructions you need to get started.

When you’re ready to enter an RSS feed, enter our RSS feed address: http://www.benandalonna.com/?feed=atom

Now that you know what RSS feeds are, you will probably start noticing them a lot. Look for this icon: Most websites which have content that is updated frequently (news websites and blogs) allow you to subscribe to an RSS feed. Using a Reader can be a really nice way to get all of your news and blog updates in one place.

Happy RSS Reading!

More Kite Photography

Bullet-Point Ben — Sun, 07 Sep 2008 19:26:12 +0000

Last weekend we spent an hour or two playing around with the kite and camera at Barber Park

Table Rock
The new set up – a picavet suspension (Brooxes basic – $55 here). It holds the camera steady and level. As for the kite, now that the spreader spars are cut to the exact same length it flies high and steady.
A view of Alonna and me hanging out
Boise River and some rafters
Canal split off point – the camera is looking straight down on those power lines…

Better Water Skiing Pictures

Bullet-Point Ben — Mon, 01 Sep 2008 22:08:09 +0000

Somehow these must have been accidentally left out of the Ruttgers post.

This is me trying to race the boat (the boat always wins)
Water skiing the wake
water skiing is even more fun when the water is smooth

Ben’s Kite Building Adventure

Bullet-Point Ben — Sun, 31 Aug 2008 01:45:49 +0000

Making your own kite might sound a little dorky.

However, a few points to consider:

This kite is 6 feet tall and 5 feet wide.
It’s called a Rokkaku. Rok for short.
It’s a Japanese fighter kite
It can easily lift a camera for taking pictures
It has an angry face on it.

A point of clarification: those are angry eyebrows not slanted eyes. This is not a racist kite.

The whole thing started when I learned that the Rokkaku kite is more or less the ideal kite for kite aerial photography. They cost at least $100, but I found this site with plans for how to build your own. It sounded like a lot of fun.

Construction quickly fell prey to what I call “2x+1″ psychology, most commonly seen in building your own house or planning a wedding:

2x: Since we’re building a house anyway, let’s make it 2 stories. Twice the square footage and it only costs a little bit more.
+1: Since we’re building a house anyway, we might as well put in cherry cabinets and granite counter tops

In this case I decided that I might as well build an enormous kite if I was going to build a kite and I might as well put a design on it if I was going to go to all the trouble of making it. Just like weddings and house construction it quickly got out of hand. I’m not sure how long it took to make it, but definitely longer than I expected.

Total cost was about $100, but only about $20 if I “prorate” it. By that I mean that I have enough material and supplies left over to make another 3 rokkaku’s, a parachute, a tent, and several duffel bags.

Tuesday we finally had a chance to take it outside and fly it. Initial flight attempts did not go well, the kite was totally unstable. I believe the problem is that the top and bottom spreader spars are not precisely the same length. Bowing them significantly mostly solved the problem for now. Once that was taken care of, the kite took off into the air, pulling like a pack of horses. We attached the camera and it didn’t even notice, just kept going up. It’s a pretty cool feeling when you build something that actually works that well.

The camera setup:

I believe this type of photo is called an abstract. Might make a nice wallpaper

Table Rock and the river.

My favorite kite photo so far, Boise River, downtown, and a bit of Table rock. You can even see the little “waterfall” that’s so much fun when you float the river. Very close to the Perfect Boise Picture I’ve been pursuing.

Not sure what the name of this canal is. That’s us casting shadows

Oakmont subdivision

Family Trip to Ruttgers, Minnesota

Alonna — Fri, 29 Aug 2008 16:30:06 +0000

Last weekend the Albertus family (plus us two Scott’s) took a weekend trip to a lake in Minnesota. We stayed at a nice resort called Ruttgers on Bay Lake and took advantage of tons of available activities including: water skiing, swimming, fishing, jumping on the water trampoline, tennis, campfires, Clay’s birthday, board games and yard games. We had so much fun! Here’s some of the highlights…

Fishing trip – Cody and Annaliese:

Annaliese kissing her baby fish:

More Fishing photos:

Ben and I spent some time water skiing and attempting new tricks. My trick was to slalom ski (one ski only). I was able to start on two, then drop one ski… but didn’t quite make it after that. However, Ben got this great photo that makes me look like a pro! (I fell immediately after this shot)

I was pretty good with 2 skiis though:

Ben tried various water skiiing apparatuses, including a wakeboard, kneeboard, and skiis.

Wakeboard: Skiis:

Kneeboarding:

Despite his best efforts, he only had success with plain old water skiis. Maybe next year.

Here’s a few more photos, including Jenga and Clay’s birthday party. As you can see, Madisen and Annaliese were busy stealing his gifts and tackling him!

SE Boise Fire

Alonna — Tue, 26 Aug 2008 05:00:14 +0000

Tonight there was a huge fire in Southeast Boise in a neighborhood near our house. We first noticed something when we heard a lot of sirens outside. The wind was really strong and we had headed out on our bikes to try out Ben’s new kite. But we saw smoke in the distance and decided to head that direction to investigate. There was a huge fire spread out across a large open field off of Amity Road and houses burning on the ridge above. It’s so dry here, and with the strong winds the fire spread like crazy. We got there pretty early so we saw it spread and multiple houses catch on fire. It sounds like about 10 houses burnt down and a bunch more damaged. Luckily it doesn’t sound like anyone was hurt. Anyway, our video and photos probably tell the story better than I can…

Northern Idaho Road Trip

Alonna — Thu, 21 Aug 2008 03:04:14 +0000

I’ve already posted about some of our activities in and around Coeur d’Alene. But we also had a fun time along the way. Here’s two google map snapshots of our route, and some photos of the trip:

A = Boise B = Grangeville C = Coeur d’Alene D = Route of the Hiawatha E = Moscow

Montana-Idaho border: River along Hwy 95 near Riggins:

South of Grangeville:

Hell’s Canyon lookout point (you can’t actually see the river from this spot, unfortunately):

Coeur d’Alene – Day 3

Alonna — Wed, 20 Aug 2008 04:57:42 +0000

Ben, Beth and I rode a “rails-to-trails” bike ride in Northern Idaho called Route of the Hiawatha. It’s an old train route in the mountains, going through 10 tunnels and over 7 trestles (bridges). The coolest part was a 1.66 mile long tunnel! The tunnel was pitch black (bike lamps required), and super cold. It was damp and only 40 degrees F inside. We were warned ahead of time to go slow, because if you go fast you’ll get mud splashed in a straight line up your back. Sure enough, a few guys sped past us and they all had thick mud streaks right up their backs! Anyway, the scenery was gorgeous and we had a really fun time. The trail is 15 miles long downhill, then you take a bus back up to the top. Here’s a few photos from the ride.

Start of the adventure: The view:

Tunnels:

Trestles:

Barber Park from 200 feet

Bullet-Point Ben — Tue, 19 Aug 2008 17:39:51 +0000

I’m trying to use the kite/camera rig to get the perfect “how the heck did you take that?” picture of the Boise river / capital building /foothills, and hopefully a few people floating down the river too. So yesterday I went over to Barber Park and played around with the camera/kite combo for about half an hour.

If I’d angled the camera about 30 degrees to the left I would have gotten a great picture of table rock and the river – much closer to the “perfect picture” I was after. But I think this looks cool anyway.
Apparently they’re growing something on the roof of this building.
I really need to put together a suspension system so the pictures aren’t so blurry all the time.

Coeur d’Alene – Days 1-2

Alonna — Fri, 15 Aug 2008 04:21:11 +0000

Last weekend Ben’s sister Beth came to visit. We decided to take a road trip to Northern Idaho, an area that Ben and I hadn’t yet explored. There’s a popular destination called Coeur d’Alene which is on a lake in a mountainous area. Also we heard about a cool rails-to-trails bike trail that we were really excited to try out.

We drove 7-hours Friday night and Saturday morning to get to Coeur d’Alene. The drive was long, but really pretty – windy mountain roads, rivers and canyons, golden-colored wheat fields, and small towns. After arriving, we had the afternoon in Coeur d’Alene, so we took out the kite to take some photos… you can see a few of those in Ben’s last post. Here’s another good one, and also a photo of our reward after a long day of driving and kite-flying.

Later that evening we hiked around Tubbs Hill, a hill near downtown Coeur d’Alene which juts out into the lake

Sunday we had a full day in Coeur d’Alene and we wanted to see more of the lake. So we rented Kayaks in the morning and paddled around. We didn’t get very far – it was windy and the water was pretty choppy, plus it turns out that kayaking is tiring! But we found a cute little beach to park at and eat lunch. Here’s some photos from that adventure.

Later that evening we drove a scenic road around part of the lake, looking for something fun to do and photo opportunities. At one pull-off, we found a beach full of perfect skipping rocks and we couldn’t resist…

At another pull-off we noticed a nice breeze… so we sent our kite up towing the camera. If you haven’t flown a kite since you were a kid, I suggest trying it sometime. It’s surprisingly fun! The sun was low in the sky, so we got some pretty sky photos too.

We were also lucky to catch a beautiful sunset over the lake that night.

I’ll post about the rest of the trip soon – including photos from our bike ride!

-Alonna